Fat Guy

Here's what I'd like to know: So, they saw a photo online, they called Jose Andres, and they got quotes and inspiration for their article. But where did they see that photo online? Could it have been Vengroff's photo here on eGullet? Or maybe Ellen's? http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=26554 Or perhaps the Lee brothers found it somewhere else. In any event, why not say where? Just as "I saw in print" would be an inadequate and inappropriate credit to the New York Times, "We saw online" fails to give credit in any meaningful way. Indeed, it implies that the online world is some sort of undifferentiated place where you can get ideas and credit them to "online." That's not the case. Somebody -- either on eGullet or on another Web site -- invested time, money, bandwidth, and effort into bringing those photos to the Lees, and that somebody deserved a better credit.

We called her winsome and she called us cockroaches. That's just not very nice. And I would like to add that, although I have soundly criticized her for many things, I am also as far as I can tell the only person -- friend or foe -- who has actively and explicitly defended her against the ethics charge implicit in the Times correction.

I'd agree that Best Bits don't exist in a vacuum, but does their specialness reside in contrast -- with, it's to be assumed, less stratospherically delicious stuff -- or in their specialness, in their conferring on the eater a sense of having gotten something the other eaters are missing out on? There's also some pulling-for-the-underdog triumph in the feeling that the best bit is sometimes the part everyone else has rejected.

Someone with Lexis could probably dig up the New York Magazine article they did a few years ago, where the guy from Jake's took the writer around the fish market. I think that piece had some discussion of the racial divide down there.

There's fresh fish at the Fulton Fish Market. It's just that I get the impression the high-quality fresh-fish business is something that takes place around the periphery. And there are definitely Chinatown vendors getting fresh fish there -- I've seen them there with their grocery carts wheeling it back to their stores. But I really don't know very much about the Chinese side of the market. I've been there with a distributor, but the white-people part and the Chinese part are somewhat segregated.

Colloquially, however, everybody refers to that list as "The Zagat Top 50."

Seth is asking important questions. I happen to think he's barking up the wrong tree on this one, but everybody will benefit from learning the answers to his questions. I would certainly be interested to learn whether or not there is vendor or retailer opposition to the move, and why. Just to work on the analogies a bit more, the Fulton Fish Market isn't even a building. It's just a concept. Every night they set it up, using ice as refrigeration, and every morning they dismantle it, leaving only the smell behind (plus a few service shed type structures along the side of the area). It becomes a parking lot, as I recall. Operationally, as far as I can tell, it's mostly just a place where boxes of frozen fish get transferred from bigger trucks to smaller trucks, or from bigger trucks containing all of one type of frozen fish to other big trucks containing multiple varieties of frozen fish. Not only do chefs and consumers not shop there, but also they're not even allowed in without special passes and permissions or an escort by a licensed wholesaler/distributor. So I don't see any landmark-type historic preservation issues here, and I don't see any particular community involvement (with the possible exception of the Chinatown fish vendors who are in close proximity to the Fulton Fish Market and will likely need to switch to motorized transport from Hunts Point). Which is not to say there won't be some commercial alteration to the area when the Fulton Fish Market relocates. I just think it will be an overall positive move with far fewer negative repercussions than any of the analogized events.

This is Ducasse's Bay of Pigs. As a strong believer in both Ducasse and Psaltis, I've got to agree with Given -- who by the way was the best waiter at Mix -- that this whole incident feels like a bait-and-switch, a sellout, a betrayal, and a "deniability debacle." I don't think any reasonable person would begrudge Ducasse the right to make some money by lending his name to a Chodorow-type crapola emporium. But that's not the story the true believers were told: Mix was supposed to be serious, Mix was serious, serious chefs and cooks like Psaltis and his kitchen team staked their reputations and livelihoods on it, writers like Jeffrey Steingarten and I championed it, and then this. I suppose Ducasse simply lacks the economic leverage to tell Chodorow to go fuck himself. Still, he could have handled this better. Here's hoping this was a one-time mistake and that Ducasse can earn back the credibility he sacrificed when he stranded his troops on Chodorow's beach. Admin: The discussion thread archive for Mix under chef Damon Gordon may be found here. The discussion thread for Mix under chef Francesco Berardinelli and renamed as "Francesco at Mix" may be found here

In the front of the Zagat survey, there is a list of Most Popular restaurants. The list is prefaced by the explanation, "Each of our surveyors has been asked to name his or her five favorite restaurants. The following list reflects their choices, followed in parentheses by last year's ranking." In New York, the four-star restaurants emphatically do not dominate the top of this list. ADNY isn't even on it. Carmine's and Rosa Mexicano anchor the middle of the list. Apparently Union Square Cafe is number one. Gramercy Tavern and Daniel are numbers two and three. Craft is number 23. Balthazar is number 12. Restaurant Magazine is doing essentially the same thing as Zagat, with a smaller and more knowledgeable group of survey participants, and a larger geographic coverage area. I would say that Restaurant Magazine's list, insofar as New York is concerned, is approximately as credible as Zagat's list, perhaps a bit more credible. In other words, it is no more ridiculous-seeming to me than Zagat. Thom has done a good job from a PR perspective with this. Just yesterday, in my e-mail inbox, came a notice from the French Laundry's publicist regarding the award, addressed to all the top food media in the US, and also to me. The ceremony has developed into a James Beard Award-type of event, with sponsorship from Penfolds and other corporations and attendance by a who's-who of chefs. This is certainly an achievement. I do feel that Thom's participation on this topic has been somewhat reductionistic: he should be taken to task for his snarky and ultimately empty "that's an opinion" line of argumentation. But I really don't see any other way for him to go. If he attempts to improve the methodology -- to compensate for attendance, geography, restaurant size, etc. -- he runs the risk of changing the list so radically that the UK will become a minor player and he'll have to start recruiting his chef-supporters from scratch. Here at eGullet, where we have access to a worldwide pool of very experienced diners, we have long delayed getting into the restaurant ranking game. To us, it would be more important to do it right than to do it in a flashy, awards-ceremony and PR-oriented manner. Someday I hope we will have such rankings, but we won't do them until we feel we have come up with a highly credible methodology. At that point, it will be very interesting to compare results from people who care about methodology with those from people who hide from it.

I would personally not look exclusively at Indian food photographs in searching for a photographer for an Indian cookbook. Rather, I'd try to find a photographer whose work seems interesting, diverse, and flexible regardless of cuisine.

I've been discriminated against in plenty of ethnic restaurants, but never at Kang Suh. And I tend to be highly attuned to what people at other tables are getting, because it's an instinct you develop as a reviewer. I do find, however, that the "barbecue" prices tend to be quite high at every Korean restaurant that serves it. It's extremely difficult for me to imagine a reasonable food-cost equation on most of these dishes -- almost $20 for a small-diameter plate of thinly sliced marinated raw meat that barely amounts to a snack -- and it has gotten to the point where I consider going out for Korean barbecue to be totally outside of the cheap-eats category: I fully expect to pay $50 a head at Kang Suh for a meal that includes barbecue, other dishes, and a modest bar tab.

I believe the Long John Silver's chain (which is in my opinion one of the best fast-food chains out there) artificially produces "scraps" so that every plate served at the restaurant can be lined with a disproportionate helping of them. A limited amount of this sort of behavior -- creating the best bits by design, rather than as a side effect -- can be beneficial. But I think when you get to the point where you're selling sacks of rice crust or you're doing a whole best-bits menu, you start to devalue the best bits. The best bits don't exist in a vacuum. In many cases, their excellence can only be truly experienced as a contrast.

One of my most treasured best-bits experiences was when a group of went, a couple of years ago, to the Dominican restaurant Margot on Broadway near 159th Street. By the standards of the establishment, we were big spenders -- really, really big spenders -- but my fantasy is that our enthusiasm for the cuisine was what earned us "the crust of the moro." Moro is a rice-beans-vegetables dish common to several Latin nations. As with those Korean rice dishes that are finished in iron pots, moro has a tendency to develop a wonderful crust at the bottom of the cooking vessel. We so enjoyed our moro that, at the end of the moro consumption period, the owner of the restaurant came out with the pot and served us each some of the crust, all the while assuring us (quite convincingly) that this was something usually reserved for special guests, family, and heads of state. This has got to be the same thing that godito is referring to above as cocolon. The phenomenon seems to be somewhat universal to rice casserole-type dishes: that leftover crusty part always manages to have a special status.

I shouldn't be telling you all this, but this thread is so good I just can't hold back. You have a right to know about this best bit among best bits. At Nobu, at the end of service, they make "The BFR." The BFR is a maki roll like none other. One of the sushi chefs goes around to all the other sushi chefs' stations at the sushi bar and collects their leftover bits and pieces -- the oddly shaped ends and such that couldn't quite be made into saleable sushi, plus whatever isn't going to be held over until the next day. He takes a massive piece of nori and spreads it with sushi rice. He then begins to construct the BFR. Strips, slices, cubes, triangles, and other odds and ends of fish get piled high into the BFR in a multicolored latticework of fish. Then everything is rolled into a maki roll that is easily 6 inches in diameter. The roll is sliced into thick wedges, and each sushi chef gets one. This is dinner. Once, just once, I was given a piece of BFR. It was the ultimate sushi experience. Masa has nothing on the BFR. BFR, by the way, stands for "Big Fucking Roll."

You're talking about the software that the restaurant uses locally. I'm talking about the online reservation system. If I go online to make a reservation via OpenTable.com, it doesn't matter if I'm the King of Siam (although, is being the King of Siam such a big deal anymore?), I'm still going to get offered the exact same reservations as Joe Schmoe. The online reservation system doesn't have those special customer notes to guide it. It isn't able to say, "Oh, this guy is a VIP at Hearth so he should be offered an 8pm table by the system." That's why you need to call. Once you're on the phone with the reservationist you at least have a chance of working outside the rigid online system, because the human reservationist has tables available that OpenTable online doesn't, and the human reservationist can treat VIPs (or non-VIPs who are very sweet) like VIPs.

Just saw a copy of it tonight. This is a really nice piece, which runs through 7 pages and includes quite a few photos (as an aside, the photographer's last name is "Dinner"). Best I can tell, the article is not online, but here's the table of contents just for reference: http://www.washingtonian.com/thismonth/contents.html Way to go, Monica.

How about, as well, a thread on alternatives to the Union Square Greenmarket?

Glenn, the reason a very popular restaurant won't give its prime tables to OpenTable is that it wants to keep control over who gets those tables. Once a table goes on OpenTable, it's first-come-first-served. OpenTable's online reservation system doesn't acknowledge VIPs, or even discriminate between people who are nice on the phone and people who treat the reservationist like shit. Nor does it know who is a friend of the chef, etc. So it's just survival for restaurants to maintain control over the best tables on the nights when all those tables will sell anyway. The point being, if you're desperate to go to a restaurant, and you can't get a reservation on OpenTable, you should try the phone anyway -- especially if you've dined there before and can therefore claim to be a repeat customer.

The one downside I can think of is that Chinatown's fish vendors may be inconvenienced. Other than that, it's hard to think of ways in which this move will damage anyone. The Fulton Fish Market is a primitive facility, which can only operate at night, has very little modern technology, is offensive to the neighborhood, is difficult for trucks to access, and is too small to handle the throughput. Chefs don't shop there, consumers don't shop there, and the fresh fish trade is only a limited part of what goes on there -- it seems primarily to be a distribution center for frozen fish. Hunts Point is convenient to I-95 and is a modern facility dedicated solely to food distribution. The economies of scale, the location, and every other apparent factor seem to favor this move. I don't know how much corruption, drug dealing, and organized crime still go on at the Fulton Fish Market, if any, but the move would certainly help on that front as well. It seems to be the inevitable course of history that industrial, warehouse, etc., businesses will be pushed out of Manhattan. It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have them here. As long as moving them out isn't accomplished by abuse of eminent domain or other shady practices, it doesn't bother me.

They make edible ink cartridges for HP printers, but I don't know anything about their quality. Here's one source: http://www.iqdurableink.com/page18.html

Just in from BLT Steak:

Once again The Daily Gullet brings you the inside scoop. Patricia Gay ("TrishCT" to you) talks to Iron Chef America director Michael Simon here. +++ Be sure to check The Daily Gullet home page daily for new articles (most every weekday), hot topics, site announcements, and more.

I personally think the edible frosting sheets look better than the jet-decorated cakes, even though the equipment for the latter is 10-20 times as expensive. In my (limited) experience, the printed-on cakes, no matter how well-made, allow for a ton of ink dispersion -- it's just inherent in the technology as far as I can tell. Whereas the edible frosting sheets can reproduce fairly high resolution images that can transfer very well to frosting without spreading out too much -- I suppose there must be technique tricks that can improve performance, but it seems possible to do very well with these. The margin for error with edible frosting sheets is also much more favorable, because you're not wasting actual food product each time you print experimentally. I don't know where you can find a shop in Chicago that does this, but if you're looking to use this technology repeatedly over time it may very well be worth it to get yourself set up with the equipment anyway. The frosting sheets, although they are often sold with relabeled printers that are allegedly special, actually work in Canon bubble jet printers. You also don't need any special scanner or software -- you can use generic products, which you may already own. All you really have to buy is the food-safe ink cartridge and the frosting-transfer sheets. These are sold under several brand names such as PhotoFrost, KopyKake, and Lucks. A couple of Web sites just for background reading: http://www.icingmagic.bizland.com/edible-paper.htm http://www.sweetart.com/ How long do you have for this project?

Schaem, plenty of the top restaurants -- especially the ones in Midtown and Uptown -- get produce that's every bit the equal of the best greenmarket produce and they don't schlep it themselves from the Union Square greenmarket. Guy Jones, Nancy McNamara, and many others deliver great stuff to all sorts of restaurants -- some of these are the same people who are providing the produce for the CSA groups. The days when you could only get greenmarket-quality produce at the greenmarket are long past. In fact, I would love for you to call Guy Jones and give him a chance to compete with what you're getting at Union Square. It would at the very least be interesting to know what he has to say. Blooming Hill Organics Guy Jones Route 208 Blooming Grove, NY 10914 845-782-7310 And when CSA season begins in June, let's do some comparisons of the produce I'm getting from Debby & Pete Kavakos of Stoneledge Farm in South Cairo, NY, versus what you're getting from the greenmarket. My impression from previous seasons has been that my stuff is better, but it would be interesting to do some taste tests if you have the time and inclination.

I hope I haven't come across as implying that anyone in the Lynes family is unclean. Although they may not rinse their dishes very well, I know for a fact that Andy washes his hands 35 times a day.